Tame creature cannot be made available for adoption, instead automatically adopting whoever it wants. Used by cats in the vanilla game. The basic requirements for adoption are intact, and the creature will only adopt individuals who have a preference for their species.

Found on LARGE_PREDATORs who ambush their prey. Instead of charging relentlessly at prey, the predator will wait till the prey is within a few squares before charging. May or may not work on other creatures.Verify

Creature may be subject to beaching, becoming stranded in shores where they will eventually air-drown. The number indicates the frequency of it occurring. Presumably requires the creature to be aquatic. Used by orcas, sperm whales and sea nettle jellyfish in the vanilla game.

The creature is non-aggressive by default and will never automatically be engaged by companions or soldiers. It will run away from any creatures that are not friendly to it, and will only defend itself if it becomes enraged. Can be thought of as the counterpoint of the [LARGE_PREDATOR] tag. When tamed, animals with this tag will be useless for fortress defense.

These body modifiers give individual creatures different characteristics. In the case of HEIGHT, BROADNESS and LENGTH, the modifier is also a percentage change to the BODY_SIZE of the individual creature. The seven numbers afterward give a distribution of ranges. Each interval has an equal chance of occurring.

Example:
[BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:90:95:98:100:102:105:110] HEIGHT : marks the height to be changed 90:95:98:100:102:105:110 : sets the range from the shortest (90% of the average height) to the tallest (110% of the average height) creature variation.

loads a plan listed OBJECT:BODY_DETAIL_PLAN files, such as b_detail_plan_default.txt. Mass applies USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE, mass alters RELSIZE, alters body part positions, and will allow tissue layers to be defined. Tissue layers are defined in order of skin to bone here.

Example:
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS:SKIN:FAT:MUSCLE:BONE:CARTILAGE]
This creates the detailed body of a fox, the skin, fat, muscle, bones and cartilage out of the vertebrate tissues.
A maggot would only need:[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:EXOSKELETON_TISSUE_LAYERS:SKIN:FAT:MUSCLE]

Sets size at a given age. Size is in cubic centimeters, and for normal body materials is roughly equal to the creature's average weight in grams.

Example:
[BODY_SIZE:0:0:10000]
[BODY_SIZE:1:168:50000]
[BODY_SIZE:12:0:220000]
This describes the size of a minotaur. His birth size would be 10,000 cm3 (~10 kg). At 1 year and 168 days old he would be 50,000 cm3 (~50 kg). And as an adult (at 12 years old) he would be 220,000 cm3 and weigh roughly 220 kg.

The creature gains skills and can have professions. If a member of a civilization (even a pet) has this token, it'll need to eat, drink and sleep. Note that this token makes the creature unable to be butchered by an adventurer, so it is not recommended for uncivilized monsters. Adventurers lacking this token can allocate but not increase attributes and skills. skills allocated will disappear on start.

Age at which creature is considered an adult. One can think of this as the duration of the child stage. If available to animal trainers, allows the creature's offspring to be rendered fully tame if trained during their childhood.

The minimum/maximum numbers of how many creatures per spawned cluster. Certain vermin fish use this token in combination with temperate ocean and river biome tokens to perform seasonal migrations. Defaults to 1:1 if not specified.

Any civilization with USE_COMMON_DOMESTIC tag (humans, dwarves) has domesticated this creature by default and always has access to it, even without any wild populations. Useless without PET, PACK_ANIMAL, WAGON_PULLER or MOUNT tags and invalid on FANCIFUL creatures.

Creatures of this caste's species with the SPOUSE_CONVERTER and NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER tokens will kidnap SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGETs of an appropriate sex and convert them into castes with CONVERTED_SPOUSE.

Creature is 'berserk' and will attack all other creatures, except members of its own species that ALSO have the CRAZED tag. It will show Berserk at the unit list. Berserk creatures go on rampages during worldgen much more frequently than non-berserk ones.

Copies Creature, but not Caste tags from another specified creature. Used when making creature variations (i.e. giants and animal people). Often used in combination with #APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION to import standard variations from a file. Variations are documented in c_variation_default.txt, which also contains the code for giants and animal people.

An arbitrary creature classification. Can be set to anything, but only existing uses are GENERAL_POISON (used in syndromes), EDIBLE_GROUND_BUG (valid targets for GOBBLE_VERMIN_x tokens), and MAMMAL (self-explanatory). A single creature can have multiple classes. Eligibility for certain entity positions can also be permitted or restricted by this tag.

Allows a creature to steal and eat edible items from a site. It will attempt to grab a food item and immediately make its way to the map's edge, where it will disappear with it. If the creature goes on rampages during worldgen, it will often steal food instead of attacking. Trained and tame instances of the creature will no longer display this behavior.

Allows a creature to (very quickly) drink your alcohol. Or spill the barrel to the ground. Also affects undead versions of the creature. Unlike food or item thieves, drink thieves will consume your alcohol on the spot rather than run away with one piece of it. Trained and tame instances of the creature will no longer display this behavior.

Allows a creature to steal things (apparently the highest value it can find). It will attempt to grab an item of value and immediately make its way to the map's edge, where it will disappear with it. If the creature goes on rampages in worldgen, it will often steal items instead of attacking. Kea birds are infamous for this. Trained and tame instances of the creature will no longer display this behavior. Also, makes the creature unable to drop hauled items until it enters combat.

Creature does not physically exist, but is known by civilizations and can be used for artistic purposes such as engravings. Used by centaurs, chimeras and griffons in the vanilla game. Adding this token to a creature causes it to not appear in generated worlds, i.e. adding it to dogs will lead to worlds being generated without dogs in them. Also removes the creature from the object testing arena's spawn list.

Egg material. Egg-laying creatures will define this 3 times, using LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:EGGSHELL, LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:EGG_WHITE, and then LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:EGG_YOLK. Eggs will be made out of eggshell. Edibility is determined by tags on whites or yolk, but they otherwise do not exist.

Creature is considered evil and will only show up in evil biomes. Civilizations with USE_EVIL_ANIMALS can domesticate them regardless of exotic status. Has no effect on cavern creatures except to restrict taming. A civilization with evil creatures can colonise evil areas.

The creature is a thing of legend and known to all civilizations. Its materials cannot be requested or preferred. The tag also adds some art value modifiers. Used by a number of creatures. Conflicts with [COMMON_DOMESTIC]

The creature is immune to FIREBALL and FIREJET attacks. Does not, by itself, make the creature immune to the damaging effects of burning in fire, and does not prevent general heat damage or melting on its own. Allows the creature to path through high temperature zones, like lava or fires.

The creature's corpse is a single food item that needs to be cleaned at a fishery to become edible. Before being cleaned the item is referred to as "raw". The food item is categorized under "fish" on the food and stocks screens, and when uncleaned it is sorted under "raw fish" in the stocks (but does not show up on the food screen).

Without this or [COOKABLE_LIVE], fished vermin will turn into food the same way as non-vermin creatures, resulting in multiple units of food (meat, brain, lungs, eyes, spleen etc.) from a single fished vermin. These units of food are categorized as meat by the game.

The creature's body is constantly at this temperature, heating up or cooling the surrounding area. Alters the temperature of the creature's inventory and all adjectent tiles, with all the effects that it implies. May trigger wildfires on high enough values. Also makes the creature immune to extreme heat or cold as long as the temperature set is not harmful to the materials that the creature is made from.

Note that temperatures 12000 and higher may cause pathfinding issues in fortress mode.

Allows a creature to fly, independent of it having wings or not. Fortress Mode pathfinding only partially incorporates flying - flying creatures need a land path to exist between them and an area in order to access it, but as long as one such path exists, they do not need to use it, instead being able to fly over intervening obstacles. Winged creatures with this token can lose their ability to fly if their wings are crippled or severed. Winged creatures without this token will be unable to fly.

Determines the chances of a creature appearing within its environment, with higher values resulting in more frequent appearance. Also affects the chance of a creature being brought in a caravan for trading. The game effectively considers all creatures that can possibly appear and uses the FREQUENCY value as a weight - for example, if there are three creatures with frequencies 10/25/50, the creature with [FREQUENCY:50] will appear approximately 58.8% of the time. Defaults to 50 if not specified. Not to be confused with [POP_RATIO].

If present, the being glows in the dark (generally used for Adventurer Mode). The tile is what replaces the being's current tile when it is obscured from your sight by darkness. The default setting for kobolds (a yellow quotation mark) provides a nice "glowing eyes" effect. The game is also hardcoded to automatically convert quotation mark GLOWTILES into apostrophes if the creature has lost one eye. This works at the generic creature level - for caste-specific glow tiles, use CASTE_GLOWTILE instead.

Creature is considered good and will only show up in good biomes. unicorns for example. Civilizations with USE_GOOD_ANIMALS can domesticate them regardless of exotic status. Has no effect on cavern creatures except to restrict taming. A civilization that has good creatures can colonise good areas in world-gen.

The value determines how rapidly grass is trampled when a creature steps on it - a value of 0 causes the creature to never damage grass, while a value of 100 causes grass to be trampled as rapidly as possible. Defaults to 5.

Defines certain behaviors for the creature. The habit types are COLLECT_TROPHIES, COOK_PEOPLE, COOK_VERMIN, GRIND_VERMIN, COOK_BLOOD, GRIND_BONE_MEAL, EAT_BONE_PORRIDGE, USE_ANY_MELEE_WEAPON, GIANT_NEST, and COLLECT_WEALTH. These require the creature to have a lair to work properly, and also don't seem to work on creatures who are not (SEMI)MEGABEASTs or NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTERs.

The creature radiates fire. It will ignite, and potentially completely destroy, items the creature is standing on. Keep booze away from critters with this tag. Also gives the vermin a high chance of escaping from animal traps and cages made of certain materials.

Found on megabeasts, semimegabeasts, and night creatures. The creature will seek out sites of this type and take them as lairs. The lair types are SIMPLE_BURROW, SIMPLE_MOUND, WILDERNESS_LOCATION, SHRINE, and LABYRINTH.

Will attack things that are smaller than it (like dwarves). Only one group of "large predators" will appear on any given map (possibly two groups on "savage" maps). In adventure mode, large predators will try to ambush and attack you (and your party will attack them back). When tamed, large predators tend to be much more aggressive to enemies than non-large predators, making them a good choice for an animal army. They may go on rampages in worldgen, and adventurers may receive quests to kill them. Also, they can be mentioned in the intro paragraph when starting a fortress e.g. "ere the wolves get hungry."

Range of time in years in which death from old age may occur. Once a creature reaches the min value, it has a random chance each season of dying from old age. The chance does not increase with further age [1]. Note that, among civilized creatures, castes which lack this token will refuse to marry others with it, and vice versa.

Makes the creature slowly stroll around, unless it's in combat or performing a job. If combined with CAN_LEARN, will severely impact their pathfinding and lead the creature to move extremely slowly when not performing any task.

A 'boss' creature. A small number of the creature are created during worldgen, their histories and descendants (if any) will be tracked in worldgen (as opposed to simply 'spawning'), and they will occasionally go on rampages, potentially leading to worship if they attack the same place multiple times. Their presence and number will also influence age names. When appearing in Fortress Mode, they will have a pop-up message announcing their arrival.

Requires specifying a BIOME in which the creature will live. Subterranean biomes appear to not be allowed.

The generic name for any creature of this type - will be used when distinctions between caste are unimportant. For names for specific castes, use CASTE_NAME instead. If left undefined, the creature will be labeled as "nothing" by the game.

Found on bogeymen. Creatures with this tag will join other bogeymen in attacking adventurers at night, and will also adopt their other behaviors, such as vanishing in smoke upon being killed. This does not affect the creature's presence elsewhere, such as for generated megabeasts, normal creatures, entity members, etc. Setting the number of bogeyman types to zero in the world gen parameters will remove only the randomly-generated bogeymen.

Found on night trolls and werebeasts. Implies that the creature is a night creature, and shows its description in legends mode entry. The creature is always hostile and will start no quarter combat with any nearby creatures, except for members of its own race. Note that this tag does not override the creature's normal behavior in fortress mode except for the aforementioned aggression, and doesn't prevent the creature from fleeing the battles it started. It also removes the creature's materials from stockpile settings list, making them be stored there regardless of settings.

This tag causes the usual behaviour of werebeasts in worldgen, that is, fleeing towns upon being cursed and conducting raids from a lair. If this tag is absent from a deity curse, the accursed will simply be driven out of towns in a similar manner to vampires. When paired with SPOUSE_CONVERTER, a very small population of the creature will be created during worldgen (sometimes only a single individual will be created), and their histories will be tracked (that is, they will not spawn spontaneously later, they must either have children or convert other creatures to increase their numbers). The creature will settle in a lair and go on rampages during worldgen. It will actively attempt to seek out potential conversion targets to abduct, convert, and have children with (if possible).

Creature can't be stunned and knocked unconscious by pain or head injuries. Creatures with this tag never wake up from sleep in Fortress Mode. If this creature needs to sleep while playing, it will die.

Cannot be raised from the dead by necromancers or evil clouds. Implies the creature is not a normal living being. Used by vampires, mummies and inorganic creatures like the amethyst man and bronze colossus. Creatures who are OPPOSED_TO_LIFE (undead) will be docile towards creatures with this token.

Creature doesn't require a [THOUGHT] body part to survive. If it does not have NO_THOUGHT_CENTER_FOR_MOVEMENT as well, it will be unable to use any attacks other than the default push. Has the added effect of preventing speech.

Is hostile to all creatures except undead and other non-living ones and will show Opposed to life in the unit list. Used by undead in the vanilla game. Functions without the NOT_LIVING token, and seems to imply said token as well. Undead will not be hostile to otherwise-living creatures given this token. Living creatures given this token will attack living creatures that lack it, while ignoring other living creatures that also have this token.

Determines caste's likelihood of having sexual attraction to certain sexes. Values default to 75:20:5 for the same sex and 5:20:75 for the opposite sex. The first value indicates how likely to be entirely uninterested in the sex, the second decides if the creature will become lovers but not marry, the third decides if the creature will marry this sex. The values themselves are simply ratios and do not need to add up to any particular value.

Allows the creature to be used as a pack animal. Currently only used by merchants without wagons. Also prevents creature from dropping hauled items on its own -- do not use for player-controllable creatures!

Controls the ability of vermin to find a way into containers when they are eating food from your stockpiles. The value for vermin in the game's current version range from 1 to 3. A higher value is better at penetrating containers.

Allows the creature to be tamed in Fortress mode. Prequisite for all other working animal roles. Civilizations that encounter it in worldgen will tame and domesticate it for their own use. Adding this to civilization members will classify them as pets instead of citizens, with all the problems that entails. However, you can solve these problems using the popular plugin Dwarf Therapist, which is completely unaffected by the tag.

Allows the creature to be tamed in Fortress mode. Prequisite for all other working animal roles. Civilizations cannot domesticate it in worldgen without certain exceptions. More difficult to tame?Verify Adding this to civilization members will classify them as pets instead of citizens, with all the problems that entails. However, you can solve these problems using the popular plugin Dwarf Therapist, which is completely unaffected by the tag.

Allows the being to represent itself as a deity, allowing it to become the leader of a civilized group. Used by unique demons in the vanilla game. Requires CAN_SPEAK to actually do anything more than settle at a location (e.g. write books, lead armies, profane temples). Doesn't appear to do anything for creatures that are already civilized. Beings with this token behave like civilized leaders and will sometimes make journeys to the wilds and tame creatures for their civilization to use; above-ground beings domesticate above-ground animals, while demons domesticate subterranean wildlife.

Sets what other creatures prefers about this creature. "Urist likes dwarves for their beards." Multiple entries will be chosen from at random. Creatures lacking a PREFSTRING token will never appear under another's preferences.

Creature has a percentage chance to flip out at visible non-friendly creatures. Enraged creatures attack anything regardless of timidity and get a strength bonus to their hits. This is what makes badgers so hardcore.

Tissue layer can be sheared for its component material. The specified modifier must be at least of the desired value for shearing to be possible (a llama's wool must have a LENGTH of 300 before it is shearable).

Shorthand for [CAN_LEARN] + [SKILL_LEARN_RATES:50].Verify Used by a number of 'primitive' creatures (like ogres, giants and troglodytes) in the vanilla game. Applicable to player races. Prevents a player from recruiting nobility, even basic ones. Subterranean creatures with this token combined with [EVIL] will become servants of goblins in their civilizations, in the style of trolls.

Creature will only appear in biomes with this plant or creature available. Grazers given a specific type of grass (such as pandas and bamboo) will only eat that grass and nothing else, risking starvation if there's none available.

If the creature has the NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER tag, it will kidnap SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGETs and transform them into the caste of its species with the CONVERTED_SPOUSE tag during worldgen. It may also start families this way.

Acts as GRAZER but set to 20000*G*(max size)^(-3/4), where G defaults to 100 but can be set in d_init, and the whole thing is trapped between 150 and 3 million. Used in all default creature RAWs for grazers.

The creature naturally knows how to swim perfectly and does not use swimmer skill, as opposed to [SWIMS_LEARNED] below. However, Fortress mode AI never paths into water anyway, so it's less useful there.

The creature will never trigger traps it steps on. Used by a number of creatures. Doesn't make the creature immune to remotely activated traps (like retractable spikes being triggered while the creature is standing over them). TRAPAVOID creatures lose this power if they're immobilized while standing in a trap, be it by stepping on thick web, being paralyzed or being knocked unconscious.

Depth that the creature appears underground. Numbers can be from 0 to 5. 0 is actually 'above ground' and can be used if the creature is to appear both above and below ground. Values from 1 to 3 are the respective cavern levels, 4 is the magma sea and 5 is the HFS. A single argument may be used instead of min and max. Demons use only 5:5; user-defined creatures with both this depth and [FLIER] will take part in the initial wave from the HFS alongside generated demons. Without [FLIER], they will only spawn from the map edges. Civilizations that can use underground plants or animals will only export (via the embark screen or caravans) things that available at depth 1.

Typically found on generated demons; causes the game to create a single named instance of the demon which will emerge from the underworld and take over civilizations during worldgen. Cannot be specified in user-defined raws.

Defines a new caste derived directly from a previous caste. The new caste inherits all properties of the old one. The effect of this tag is automatic if one has not yet defined any castes: "Any caste-level tag that occurs before castes are explicitly declared is saved up and placed on any caste that is declared later, unless the caste is explicitly derived from another caste."

Changes the language of the creature into unintelligible 'kobold-speak', which creatures of other species will be unable to understand. If a civilized creature has this and is not part of a SKULKING civ, it will tend to start wars with all nearby civilizations and will be unable to make peace treaties due to 'inability to communicate'.

The vermin are attracted to rotting stuff and loose food left in the open and cause unhappy thoughts to dwarves who encounter them. Present on flies, knuckle worms, acorn flies, and blood gnats. Speeds up decay?Verify

The width of the creature's vision arcs, in degrees (i.e. 0 to 360). The first number is binocular vision, the second is non-binocular vision.

Binocular vision has a minimum of about 10 degrees. Monocular vision has a maximum of about 350 degrees. Values past these limits will be accepted, but will default to ~10 degrees and ~350 degrees respectively.

Attacks that damage tissue have the chance to latch on in a wrestling hold. The grabbing bodypart can then use the "shake around" wrestling move, causing severe, armor-bypassing tensile damage according to the attacker's body volume.

Attack type addition that injects a material into the victim's blood. If the attack is blunt or the injected material lacks [ENTERS_BLOOD] token, the material will splatter over attacked body part instead.

When this attack lands successfully, a specified interaction will take effect on the target creature. The attack must break the target creature's skin in order to work. This will take effect in worldgen as well.

Successful attack draws out an amount of blood randomized between the min and max value. Beware that this will trigger any ingestion syndromes attached to the target creature's blood - for example, using this attack on a vampire will turn you into one too.

These next groups of tokens include several tokens that are not technically classified as creature tokens in the string dump, but bear mentioning in this list as they are used frequently in creature raws. (Some regular creature tokens may also be reprinted for the sake of ease of navigation)

For example an Iron Man has a gaseous poison within and this tissue (GAS is its name) has the token [TISSUE_LEAKS] and its state is GAS so when you puncture the iron outside and damage this tissue it leaks gas (can have a syndrome by using a previous one in the creature sample.) [TISSUE_LAYER_UNDER:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:{tissue}] {tissue} is what will be under the TISSUE_LAYER here is an example Tissue from Iron Man:
[TISSUE:GAS] [TISSUE_NAME:gas:NP] [TISSUE_MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:GAS] [TISSUE_MAT_STATE:GAS] [RELATIVE_THICKNESS:50] [TISSUE_LEAKS] [TISSUE_SHAPE:LAYER]